The Interview: North Korea, the Media and our Obsession with Relevancy

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON DECEMBER 25, 2014

There are some spoilers ahead so watch the 
movie first before reading any further.

The Interview is a comedy about an idiot who hosts a tabloid TV show called Skylark Tonight.  On the show he interviews celebrities about whose getting new boobs, a bald Rob Lowe and who’s having sex with whom.  It’s also about his best friend and producer buddy who wants to start doing more serious journalism.

The movie starts with a sweet little North Korean girl on a stage singing a song in front of thousands of people.  Her song asks for the agonizing death of all Americans as a missile is launched from the huge Monument of the Party Foundation structure behind her.  North Korea in the movie is on the brink of war and people around the world, namely the United States government, are starting to take notice of the madness and unpredictability of dictator, Kim Jong-un.

The self-obsessed interviewer, Dave Skylark and his more serious producer, Aaron Rapaport receive news that the supreme leader Kim Jong-un is not only a fan of the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory but also their show Skylark Tonight.  Aaron goes to China to meet with a Kim Jong-un’s beautiful advisor named Sook to discuss the terms of the interview.  Aaron and Dave decide to do the interview, which will be conducted in North Korea and where all questions for the supreme leader will be provided by his government, meaning their interview should amount to Kim Jong-un essentially interviewing himself.

Aaron has reservations about going but Dave talks him into it, and then they party hard on ‘E’ with half-naked women.  The CIA shows up the next day and asks the two hung-over men to assassinate the eternal leader, Kim Jong-un for the United States government.  After agreeing to ‘take out’ the dictator, Aaron and Dave go to Langley and train at CIA headquarters.  They learn about how they are going to kill the leader and also get some nifty gadgets for communication, scanning and tracking for when they go on their secret spy mission.

They fly to Pyongyang; the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea where they are met by Sook, who welcomes them to her country, on behalf of Kim Jong-un.  While there Dave meets the supreme leader and finds out he’s like one of the guys.  He owns fast cars and a tank, which he and Dave fire at a group of trees.  Over one-on-one basketball, Dave and Kim sort of bond, finding many things about each other that are relatable, mainly the pressure of living up to their father’s wishes.

“You know what’s more destructive than a nuclear bomb?  Words…..” 

- Kim Jong-un to Dave while playing basketball.

Resulting from this new found bond, Dave no longer wants to assassinate Kim Jong-un.  He thinks he’s a good guy that has been merely misunderstood.  Aaron on the other hand wants to kill him and thinks that he’s just manipulating Dave.  Dave soon realizes that Kim Jong-un’s hospitality was a lie.  So he and Aaron devise a plan to expose to the world and to the North Korean people that Kim Jong-un is not a God, but rather a mortal man that forces his rule over them all.

Aside from the sexism jokes, the racism jokes, the asshole jokes and the intellectually-challenged jokes, the movie is more about the absurdity of the America media than North Korea.  Sure the movie doesn’t really have nice things to say about Kim Jong-un, his methods and his God-like lies he disseminates about himself, but the focus here is how stupid people have become in America and their unflinching desire for the lowest common denominator in their news.

The movie is also about the fear of difference.  Is Kim Jong-un someone the world should worry about?  Probably.  The movie depicts Kim Jong-un as a pretty cool dude but overwhelmed with the responsibility of ruling his country under the same hammer his father ruled by.  Soon his true colors become apparent as we see a man that is in total control of his government.  He is responsible for depraving many of his population of food while imprisoning anyone who questions his methods in concentration camps.  

The point here is North Korea is a country with a paranoid government that has cut themselves off from the rest of the world.  The country’s leader is a young man that is following in the footsteps of his totalitarian father, minus the sense of humor.  He’s a leader that drastically lies to his populace in order to gain worship and obedience from them.  Most countries do this but usually in a less fascistic way, here in the west we use the media to lie for us.  Here we gain worship and obedience through misdirection.  Here we are told to celebrate simple people with simple views, non-threatening views so we the people don’t get any bright ideas of who and how our leaders are running the country. 

The Interview is a silly movie and it’s hard sometimes to even watch James Franco, but above all the humor and in some cases humorless humor, you begin to see that this movie is about a society obsessed with fame.  It’s about a society filled with eager people willing to sell their integrity for some form of spotlight.  For that, the movie is a bit of a tragedy because in the end our heroes got the fame they were looking for.  They got the recognition but most importantly in our self-obsessed society, they got to remain relevant.